Falling leaves

Nowadays, whenever I see a leaf fall off a tree I wonder if there's a raccoon up there shaking the branches.

It started when we went to visit the Persimmon Tree one night, with a view toward picking some fruit to make bread with. As we approached the tree, we startled a raccoon who had been prowling around its base. He galloped away from us while making sure to keep us in his sights. As we circled closer to the tree to inspect the ripeness of the persimmons, he would move around in a wider circle, keeping us nice and far away.

We saw that while the persimmons were bright orange on the bottom, they were mostly still green on top. But we kept looking, because every once in a while a badly damaged persimmon would fall right in front of us. One almost landed on C--'s head! We thought that the falling persimmons must have been over-ripe, so we kept looking for ones that were just right.

Eventually, we started to feel awkward around that raccoon. He just kept staring at us . . . So we moved away a bit, to see what he would do.

Sure enough, he pawed his way back to the base of the tree (quite cautiously, of course.) And then, to our surprise, he jumped up to a split in its trunk! He sat there for a while, his fuzzy body pressed into the trunk. He glanced at us, then decided we weren't important. Then he decided to keep going up, and soon he was lost among the leaves.

That's when I understood where the falling fruit was coming from. There must have been another raccoon up there the whole time, eating fruit, and maybe throwing it at us to make us go away! In fact, the entire tree might have been infested with the adorable hidden animals!

So every time I see a tree move, if I can't feel any wind, I have to wonder who's up there.